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The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (merged)
- Thread starter Mark
- Start date
EricNoah
Adventurer
Torm said:Arthur - Perfect, other than being just slightly too "together" at the end.
Ford - Perfect.
Marvin - Perfect. He was slimmer in the book, but it also says he was built FOR the Heart of Gold, which was a running shoe in the book. You change the ship, you change Marvin. Makes sense. Alan Rickman rocks.
Zaphod - Good. I wish he had been a little more condescending to Arthur. "Monkey-man" and etc.
Eddie - Perfect.
Questulon - Very weird: he is now a SHE, and Vice President of the Galaxy instead of President of the publishers for the Guide. But good.
Trillian - Excellent: the best Trillian period. I wasn't all that happy with the relationship between her and Arthur, but Douglas wrote that in himself, and it was well done, so I'll live with it.
Vogons - Perfect.
Overall - 8/10. Needed another hour, with some scenes and dialogue added back in. Maybe on the DVD?<----(Joo Jantas)
I agree that more time would have helped. LotR proved we can tolerate a 2-1/2 to 3 hour movie.
Movie-Trillian -- kind of a mix of book-Trillian and (So Long and Thanks for All the Fish) book-Fenchurch, right? Not a bad combo if it's necessary to cut out a complication from the big overall story.
D+1
First Post
7/10 Reasonably good but not in danger of being great. Read the books, watched the TV series. Read more books. As a minor afficianado of things Hitchhiker I think you COULD have expected a LOT more from a movie version - but it's not Lord of the Rings, so this is about right in its degree of faithfulness and so forth. You weren't ever going to get a masterful 12-hour 3-5 film epic comedic treatment so anyone who does complain on that score clearly has little touch with reality.
What you wind up with is a good, very watchable effort to take Hitchhiker material and present it to The Great Unwashed. I think they could have done a little better. First and foremost the pacing and timing in the initial parts there was off. Thinking back on it now it did feel as if it expected that you already knew the story because it wasn't until the middle of the film that exposition really seemed to catch up to the ongoing plot and that's NOT good for a comedy that relies on being able to wrap people up in the crazy universe it presents.
I think it's because they still were relying a little too much on the books/series/etc. rather than making a movie that stands unsupported on its own. Movies, even comedies, have much different dramatic requirements than television or the written word. You've got about 90 minutes to 2 hours to go from knowing NOTHING about the characters or the world to sending people walking out of the theater completely versed in it all. Hitchhiker fell short of that requirement IMO, but to give them their due they had a lot of material to try to compress/cull to get one cohesive movie out of it. Eric's right - too much screen time on Vogons that could have been better used elsewhere. No Oscar for adapted screenplay but A for effort.
The characters were all just GREAT. Rockwell and Deschanel were particularly good in their parts. First thing I've seen Rockwell in since Galaxy Quest, and I recognized Deschanel from Elf and I could watch both of them in dang near anything in the future. Actually I think Mos Def did quite well too as Ford but with Ford and Arthur, especially early in the film, several of their lines got stomped on and I missed the dialogue. At first I thought it was just bad sound editing (and it was) but I think the accents and annunciation contributed.
So, well worth the $9 ticket but I wouldn't expect too many new converts to the cult.
What you wind up with is a good, very watchable effort to take Hitchhiker material and present it to The Great Unwashed. I think they could have done a little better. First and foremost the pacing and timing in the initial parts there was off. Thinking back on it now it did feel as if it expected that you already knew the story because it wasn't until the middle of the film that exposition really seemed to catch up to the ongoing plot and that's NOT good for a comedy that relies on being able to wrap people up in the crazy universe it presents.
I think it's because they still were relying a little too much on the books/series/etc. rather than making a movie that stands unsupported on its own. Movies, even comedies, have much different dramatic requirements than television or the written word. You've got about 90 minutes to 2 hours to go from knowing NOTHING about the characters or the world to sending people walking out of the theater completely versed in it all. Hitchhiker fell short of that requirement IMO, but to give them their due they had a lot of material to try to compress/cull to get one cohesive movie out of it. Eric's right - too much screen time on Vogons that could have been better used elsewhere. No Oscar for adapted screenplay but A for effort.
The characters were all just GREAT. Rockwell and Deschanel were particularly good in their parts. First thing I've seen Rockwell in since Galaxy Quest, and I recognized Deschanel from Elf and I could watch both of them in dang near anything in the future. Actually I think Mos Def did quite well too as Ford but with Ford and Arthur, especially early in the film, several of their lines got stomped on and I missed the dialogue. At first I thought it was just bad sound editing (and it was) but I think the accents and annunciation contributed.
So, well worth the $9 ticket but I wouldn't expect too many new converts to the cult.
Last edited:
The_lurkeR
First Post
Saw it this afternoon, and gave it a 7.
I've never read the books, but being a geek I was still familiar with much of it. The principal actors were all great in their roles, with Rockwell as Zaphod being most memorable. The movie itself had trouble with the pacing and storytelling as it went along, and felt dis-jointed in the end. Overall though it was enjoyable and worth seeing at the theater, but the matinee if you can work it.
I've never read the books, but being a geek I was still familiar with much of it. The principal actors were all great in their roles, with Rockwell as Zaphod being most memorable. The movie itself had trouble with the pacing and storytelling as it went along, and felt dis-jointed in the end. Overall though it was enjoyable and worth seeing at the theater, but the matinee if you can work it.
The_lurkeR
First Post
mojo1701 said:
You are correct sir!
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